Phillip Zonkel

Staff Writer

Recent articles

Dogs

Brittany Ransom thinks the days of the rubber chew toys are numbered. She wants to combine art and technology in a revolutionary, interactive dog toy called The Jaw Jabbler.Ransom, a Cal State Long Beach art department faculty member who teaches about digital fabrication, electronics, kinetics and mechanics, is creating a high-tech toy she hopes will enable dog owners to communicate with their pooch.“I want...

Education

Students at the Long Beach Unified magnet school California Academy of Mathematics and Science have won almost $11 million in scholarships and grants, including a Gates Millennium Scholar.Alero Arueyingho, 16, an honors student born in Nigeria, is among 1,000 students nationwide to receive the prestigious scholarship, which will cover everything but her tuition when she attends Pepperdine...

News

Competition in the Special Olympics Southern California Summer Games is open to players of all skill and mental-disability levels, but in the upper echelons, many of the athletes are world-class competitors.The summer games will take place Saturday and Sunday on the campus at Cal State Long Beach.“You’re going to see and witness some athletes who are competing with intellectual disabilities and physical disabilities,”...

Education

Michael Navia, the principal at Millikan High School, treats students like they are his own kids, a parent said.Navia, who started at Millikan in September, was principal at Cubberely Elementary from 2000 to 2010 and then was transferred to Marshall Middle School, now Marshall Academy of the Arts. About a year or two later, Navia heard that one of his previous students, Michael Hall, was...

Education

The two Cal State Long Beach students who brought illegal knives on campus in separate, unrelated incidents earlier this year could have their cases dropped by the city prosecutor’s office if they complete a workforce court diversion youth program they accepted from the prosecutor, City Prosecutor Doug Haubert said.The court diversion program, which costs...

Scholarships

NORWALK >> Alejandra Carranza, a Cerritos College honors student, has been named among the nation’s top scholars by one of the most competitive undergraduate transfer scholarship programs in the country.Carranza of Huntington Park was among 75 students in the U.S. to receive up to $40,000 a year to finish her bachelor’s degree from the Jack Kent Cooke...

Higher education

Mario Chartosias, a research and teaching assistant at Cal State Long Beach’s College of Engineering, thought he might have to pack his bags and return to his Mediterranean homeland once his job contract ended with the university.Instead, thanks to a federal judge’s ruling, Chartosias – and thousands of international graduates like him – can stay in the United States and continue working an extra two...

Education

A local assemblyman wants to help the state replicate a Long Beach education partnership that prepares students for a pathway to college.Assemblyman Patrick O-Donnell, D-Long Beach, has secured $15 million in the proposed 2016-17 budget that would help fund The California College Promise through collaborations between community colleges and high schools.The details of how the money would be allocated in these proposed partnerships is...

Obituaries

Longtime Long Beach resident Maycie Herrington, a social worker, community activist and African-American history conservator known for her work in helping to preserve the history of the Tuskegee Airmen, died Tuesday. She was 97.Herrington’s daughter, Kay Marie Anthony, said her mother was “a force to be reckoned with.”Herrington also was featured in two books:

Teacher unions

Members of the CSU faculty union will receive a more than 10 percent salary increase covering three years after a CSU committee approved the contract Tuesday.The Collective Bargaining Committee unanimously ratified the agreement in a 5 to 0 vote during the Board of Trustees’ May meeting at the CSU Chancellor’s Office in Long Beach.About 97 percent of the